Vietnamese

Last Updated: 2023-07-20

Background

Language Family: Austro-Asiatic / Mon-Khmer / Viet-Muong / Vietnamese

• I have chosen to address the differences between Northern Vietnamese which is spoken in Hanoi and Southern Vietnamese which is spoken in Ho Chi Minh City. They are extremely similar, however there are some differences between phonemes (e.g. /s/ and /ʂ/ have merged in the Hanoi dialect). However, given that the Crúbadán corpus is more inline with the Northern dialect (see Tones below), I have chosen to only create a ruleset for that dialect.

Phonology

• There is much disagreement between sources about the phonemic inventory of Vietnamese. While Thomas (1968; as cited in Kirby 2011, 382) recognizes the palatal stop /c/, Kirby (2011) claims that the segment is rather /tɕ/ in Hanoi Vietnamese (p. 382). Thompson and Kirby also conflict in their analysis of word-final ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨nh⟩. While Thompson argues that they represent the phonemes /c/ and /ɲ/ respectively, Kirby argues that they are allophonic variants of /k/ and /ŋ/. I follow Kirby’s analysis and suggest that /k/ and /ŋ/ are underlying and they are palatalized word finally.
• Kirby also does not recognize the existence of retroflex consonants in Vietnamese, though these are recognized by other sources (e.g. Michaud, Ferlus, and Nguyễn 2015, 5). With respect to the southern dialect, I have chosen to include them in the inventory merely for comparison.
• Linguists also disagree extensively on how many vowels there are in Vietnamese (Emerich 2012, 32–33). Almost every source provides a different answer. Some of the differences between sources are simply the result of dialectal variation, but even within the sources, which focus specifically on Hanoi Vietnamese, there is much variation.
• I will draw primarily from Kirby’s illustration, but my phonological account does diverge from Kirby’s. I, for example, include /p/ in the phonemic inventory while Kirby does not.
• Although the glottal stop is predictably pronounced word-initially preceding vowels (and /w/ in Northern Vietnamese), it is proven to be phonemic based on the analysis done by Pham (2009).

Consonants

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p ɓ	t̪ t̪ʰ	ɗ	ʈ	c	k	ʔ
Affricates					tɕ
Fricatives	f v		s z	ʂ		x ɣ	h
Nasals	m	n̪			ɲ	ŋ
Trills			r
Approximants	w		l		j
Note: The phonemes in bold appear only in the Southern dialect. Where phonemes share a cell those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced. The labial stop on the right is an implosive.

Vowels

• Vowel length is distinctive for /a/ and /ɤ/ (Kirby 2011, 384).
• The diphthongs listed below are referred to as contour vowels (Emerich 2012, 36). In open syllables, the second vowel of each pairing is more centralized; otherwise, the level of frontness/backness is maintained.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		ɯ u
High-Mid	e		ɤ o
Low-Mid	ɛ		ɔ
Low		a

Diphthongs
/ie/, /ɯɤ/, /uo/

Tones

• Vietnamese has six tones (Tang 2007, 6) (in parentheses are alternative specifications):
  • Level (mid level): unmarked
  • Falling (low falling): marked with a grave accent (`)
  • Rising (mid rising): marked with an acute accent (´)
  • Dipping-rising (mid falling-rising): marked with a hook above ( ̉ )
  • Creaky (mid rising, glottalized): marked with a tilde (◌̃)
  • Constricted (low falling, glottalized): marked with a dot below ( ̣ )
• The creaky and dipping-rising tones have merged in the southern dialect, resulting in just the dipping-rising tone (ibid.).
• When the diphthongs /ie/, /ɯɤ/, and /uo/ occur word-finally, the tone diacritic is written on the second-to-last vowel grapheme, rather than the last e.g. thìa /t̪ʰie˨˩/, bủa /ɓuo˧˩˧/, and cựa /kɯɤ˨˩ˀ/ (cf. pre-consonantal thiền /t̪ʰie˨˩n̪/, buổi /ɓuo˧˩˧j/, and cược /kɯɤ˨˩ˀk/).
• For word-final /w/-vowel sequences, there is orthographic variation in where the tone diacritic is placed, e.g. khỏe ~ khoẻ /xwɛ˧˩˧/, nhòa ~ nhoà /ɲwaː˨˩/, hủy ~ huỷ /hwi˧˩˧/.

Tone Examples
Specification	Orthographic Representation	Chosen IPA Transcription
Level (mid-level)	e	ɛ ˧
Falling (low falling)	è	ɛ ˨˩
Rising (mid rising)	é	ɛ ˧˥
Dipping-rising (mid falling-rising)	ẻ	ɛ ˧˩˧
Creaky (mid rising, glottalized)	ẽ	ɛ ˧˥ˀ
Constricted (low falling, glottalized)	ẹ	ɛ ˨˩ˀ

Alphabet

• Although I have listed the transcription for both dialects (see the Comments column), I have chosen to create a ruleset for the Northern (Hanoi) dialect only, given that both the creaky and dipping-rising tones are present in Crúbadán (they have merged in the Southern dialect).

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/aː/
ă	/a/
â	/ɤ/
b	/ɓ/
c	/k/
d	/z/; /j/	/z/: in northern dialect; /j/: in southern dialect
đ	/ɗ/
e	/ɛ/
ê	/e/
g	/ɣ/
h	/h/
i	/i/; /j/	/j/: following any vowel
k	/k/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n̪/; /ŋ/	/ŋ/ word-finally in southern dialect
o	/ɔ/; /w/	/w/: preceding ⟨a⟩, ⟨ă⟩, and ⟨e⟩ (not after ⟨q⟩); /w/ following ⟨a⟩ and ⟨e⟩
ô	/o/
ơ	/ɤː/
p	/p/	predominantly realized as /ɓ/
r	/z/; /r/	/z/: in northern dialect; /r/: in southern dialect
s	/s/; /ʂ/	/s/: in northern dialect; /ʂ/: in southern dialect
t	/t̪/, /k/	/k/: word-finally in southern dialect
u	/u/; /w/	/w/: preceding <y>, <ê>, <â>, and <ơ>; /w/ following any vowel
ư	/ɯ/
v	/v/ /j/	/v/: in northern dialect; /j/: in southern dialect
x	/s/
y	/i/; /j/	/j/: following any vowel except /u/
	/ʔ/	word-initially preceding vowels and /w/ in the northern dialect; word-initially preceding vowels in the southern dialect
Multigraph
ch	/tɕ/; /c/	(word-initially) /tɕ/: in northern dialect; /c/: in southern dialect. (word-finally) /k/: in northern dialect; /t/ in southern dialect.
gh	/ɣ/
gi	/z/; /j/	/z/: in northern dialect; /j/ in southern dialect
kh	/x/
ng	/ŋ/
ngh	/ŋ/
nh	/ɲ/; /ŋ/; /n̪/	/ŋ/: word-finally in northern dialect; /n̪/ word-finally in southern dialect
ph	/f/
qu	/kw/
th	/t̪ʰ/
tr	/tɕ/; /ʈ/	/tɕ/: in northern dialect; /ʈ/ in southern dialect
iȇ	/ie/
yȇ	/ie/
ya	/ie/
ia	/ie/
ươ	/ɯɤ/
ưa	/ɯɤ/
uȏ	/uo/
ua	/uo/
au	/aw/
ao	/aːw/
ay	/aj/
ai	/aːj/

Lenition Rules

• Over time, stops have fully spirantized between consonants and vowels (Michaud, Ferlus, and Nguyễn 2015, 6):
  • /p/ changed to [β]
  • /t/ changed to [ð]
  • /c/ changed to [ʝ]
  • /k/ changed to [ɣ] which lead to the stabilization of:
  • [β] to /v/
  • [ð] and [ʝ] to /z/ in the northern dialect
  • [ð] and [ʝ] to /j/ in the southern dialect
• In the southern dialect, the retroflex consonant /ʈ/ and the palatal consonant /c/ slightly spirantize to [ʈʂ] and [tɕ], respectively.

References

Emerich, Giang Huong. 2012. “The Vietnamese Vowel System.” PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania. http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/632.

Kirby, James P. 2011. “Vietnamese (Hanoi Vietnamese).” Journal of the International Phonetic Association 41 (3). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025100311000181.

Michaud, Alexis, Michel Ferlus, and Minh-Châu Nguyễn. 2015. “Strata of Standardization: The Phong Nha Dialect of Vietnamese (Quảng Bình Province) in Historical Perspective.” Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, Dept. Of Linguistics, University of California 38 (1): 124–62. https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01141389.

Pham, Andrea Hoa. 2009. “The Identity of Non-Identified Sounds: Glottal Stop, Prevocalic /w/ and Triphthongs in Vietnamese.” Toronto Working Paper in Linguistics.

Tang, Giang. 2007. “Cross-Linguistic Analysis of Vietnamese and English with Implications for Vietnamese Language Acquisition and Maintenance in the United States.” Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement 2. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/jsaaea/vol2/iss1/3/.

Thomas, David D. 1968. “A Vietnamese Grammar.” Lingua 19 (1-2): 193–202. https://doi.org/10.1016/0024-3841(69)90119-3.